


Doctorly Advice

by Bobbie23



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e05 Divide and Conquer, F/M, Gen, Sam and Jack Ship Day 2020 (Stargate), Those things you said yesterday...Did you mean them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25565077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobbie23/pseuds/Bobbie23
Summary: “Can you think of a scenario where I talk to Carter about this and we stay in the same unit?” He doesn’t mean to sound snippy; like Daniel is before his first cup of coffee. Janet acknowledges his point with a slight tilt of her head. “Besides, I don’t know what the hell to say to her.”
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77





	Doctorly Advice

“Colonel,” Janet greets as she opens her front door while trying to keep Cassie’s dog from jumping up. “What are you doing here?”

As soon as the words leave her mouth, she looks him over and realises exactly why he’s here. She throws him a compassionate look. “Where’s Cassie?” Jack asks instead of answering her question.

“She had a sleepover last night and won’t be back till after lunch.” She opens the door wider. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Love one, Doc.” He follows her in, blocking the dogs’ attempt to make a break for it by shutting the door behind him. The dog trails behind them, bumping Jack’s hand with his nose.

Janet gestures at the open patio doors before busying herself with pouring two cups of coffee. Jack walks through to the back yard. The dog makes a beeline for the yellow ball in the middle of the grass while Jack sits on the steps leading down from the house. The dog drops the ball at his feet and waits eagerly for Jack to throw it for him. Jack chucks it at the other end of the yard and watches the black and red Shiba-Inu race after it. It lands in a bush. The little guy hunkers down to growl at it.

Janet emerges from the house and sits beside him. She hands him a cup with steaming coffee and tests the temperature of her own by touching it to her lower lip. She lowers it to her lap without sipping, waiting for him to start.

“How’s Carter?” Jack knows he shouldn’t ask the doctor to betray Carter’s confidence.

Normally, he wouldn’t dream of it but he needs to talk to someone after yesterday. He can’t talk to Daniel or Teal’c about this even though Daniel has been hovering to check on him. Talking to Carter could only make this more difficult and embarrassing than it already is.

He doesn’t know how Hammond is going to handle the za’tarc mess and he doesn’t want anyone to accuse them of covering anything up. Not that there’s anything to cover up; that’s what it would look like. As the base CMO, Janet understands the Air Force and is honest to a fault. She’s a logical thinker who gives good advice. She’s a friend who won’t romanticise the whole incident, she’ll give it to him straight. And, yes, he wants to check on Carter.

Yesterday was a disaster. Aside from being accused of being a za’tarc, Martouf died. He was one of the two Tok’ra Jack actually likes. This must be confusing for Carter as she still struggles to separate Jolinar’s feelings from her own.

“Physically, she recovered from the anaesthetic. Otherwise, she’s confused,” Janet replies carefully. Clearly, that’s as far as she’ll elaborate given the circumstances. “I’m going to check on her later.”

“That’s good,” he nods. He tries to think of something else to say, a message to pass on. Depending on how this conversation goes, Janet will probably inform Carter of his visit.

“Maybe you should check on her too,” she suggests kindly.

“Can you think of a scenario where I talk to her about this and we stay in the same unit?” He doesn’t mean to sound snippy; like Daniel is before his first cup of coffee. Janet acknowledges his point with a slight tilt of her head. “Besides, I don’t know what the hell to say to her.”

“You can’t avoid her forever,” Janet reminds him. He rolls his eyes at her. He knows that.

“I don’t think she wants to talk to me.” Janet looks down at her cup. Yeah, they’ve talked about this already. Jack Carter’s reasons might fall somewhere between ‘can’t talk’ rather than ‘want to talk’. “I don’t want to make this worse,” he sighs. “What’s your take on all of this?”

She considers the question for a moment, before asking, “As a doctor? A woman in the military? Or as Sam’s best friend?”

“I don’t know. Pick one, all of the above,” Jack replies. Janet tilts her head to the side, contemplating his question.

“I think what you admitted to is debatable,” she starts, flicking to doctor-mode. “I went over my notes and the reports I made during preliminary tests of the armbands. If you were asking for my medical opinion, I’d say you were under the influence during the incident you recalled.”

“The armbands had fallen off at that point,” Jack points out reluctantly.

“With how they were affecting your judgement before your unauthorised mission, there’s an argument to be made that you were coming down from their effects,” she counters. “Your ability to compartmentalise under those circumstances would be compromised.”

She’s giving them an out, a reasonable explanation for anyone who wishes to kick up a fuss and bring them up on charges. He appreciates it more than she’ll ever know, if only for Carter’s sake. He knows the incident was more than just the armbands. It was the culmination of what had been building for months. Before he asked her to go fishing. Before their week stranded on another world.

“I also know, you’d have stayed if it had been Daniel or Teal’c stuck behind that forcefield,” she tacks on.

“But I would have felt a little different about it,” he admits. That’s what they caught him on, his emotions not his actions. Their emotions, he silently reminds himself. “For the record, nothing has happened.”

“Oh, I know, Colonel,” she teases him. She doesn’t care that he squints at her. Women talk. Hmm. _Did she really have to remind him of his rank?_ “For the record, I’m sorry this was so public.”

Jack grunts. There’s nothing they can do about being backed into a corner now. Who knows if they would ever have admitted anything if the za’tarcs weren’t an issue?

He’s always found Carter attractive, he’s never questioned that. He’s appreciated her attitude since the moment she challenged him to an arm wrestle. She has saved his ass more times than he can count. She smiles at his jokes, often fires one back at him or smiles. Giggling occasionally, but he is barely able to process that so he squashes it. Okay, at some point, their banter crossed the line from joking to flirting. Jack should have paid more attention to the signs. He thought it was harmless. He hoped it was because he didn’t want to stop. It was easy to ignore because, in his mind, there’s no way someone as incredible as Carter would ever feel the same. He can’t pinpoint when his feelings changed but if he had to hazard a guess it was somewhere between him kissing her counterpart from another reality and Endora.

Yeah, that was kind of a mess.

This doesn’t happen to him. He’s not the guy who falls for someone in his command. He’s not the asshole who’d try to bed his female second and Carter’s, sure as hell, not the kind of person who would put up with it. She’s a good officer with an incredible career ahead of her. He won’t be the guy who destroys that for her. Unfortunately, the fraternisation regulations don’t differentiate between having feelings and actually acting on them.

“What about as a woman in the military?” Jacks asks.

Janet sighs and shakes her head. “You know this will come down harder on Sam.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He doesn’t agree with it but this would leave less of a mark on his record than hers. He’ll do anything to save Carter from that kind of kickback. Least of all the guilt which would go hand in hand with splitting the team. That isn’t an option as far as he’s concerned.

“The rumours will get worse,” the doctor continues.

“Rumours?” Now, she’s lost him. There are rumours? He doesn’t pay attention to scuttlebutt. He knows it happens though very little reaches him. When it has, it’s never been about Carter. Possibly because he’s her CO or, and more likely, it’s about the both of them.

“She’s the ranking female officer on the base, on the flagship team, who also overlaps with research and development. How would she be able to do all that if she weren’t sleeping with her CO?” Janet scowls. There’s a bite to her words which make him wonder if she’s talking from personal experience. “There are some people who will never give her the credit she deserves for the hard work and dedication she’s put in to achieve that.”

“Ah,” he winces.

“I also know you well enough to see you have a genuine regard for one another, whether you act on your feelings or stay as you are. You’re not the kind of people who would deliberately break the frat regs. Personally, I think you and Sam deserve to care about whoever you want no matter what our job dictates, which can be incredibly isolating and there are very few people outside of it who understand that. It negates itself. How do we turn to other members of our team and not get close?” She sucks in a breath, bracing herself for the rest of what she has to say. “Professionally, however, those rules exist for a valid reason. I’ve seen good careers be destroyed by this. I don’t think you and Sam would get a pass because you’re one of the few rare exceptions to that rule.”

He drops his chin. He’s trying to make this better even though he knows that could make things worse. “What do you think I should do?”

Janet considers his question for a long time. “Those things you said yesterday…did you mean them?”

_‘I care about her…A lot more than I’m supposed to.’_

“Yeah,” Jack answers softly, refusing to look at her despite knowing she’s watching him. She wants to know if the za’tarc incident changed anything for him. It hasn’t. If anything, it’s made him realise how much he cares about her. Jack has to live with the memory of Carter’s eyes boring into him as he made his confession, the way she looked at him after she uttered her own.

“Enough to wait?”

They both know the answer. “I won’t hold her back,” Jack admits.

Janet sighs. “Then keep doing what you’re doing. Keep _caring_ ,” she emphasises the word because she can’t call it as something else, something more, not even between them. Jack knows he’s more than halfway there. “Because there might be a day when you’ll be able to do more than care.”


End file.
